March 15 was a historic day for the Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative (SC2), a partnership between the White House and 14 federal agencies aimed at breaking down federal silos and helping cities facing long-term challenges build capacity and more effectively use federal funds. The White House SC2 Convening featured panel conversations and roundtables with mayors of pilot cities and philanthropic, nonprofit, and business leaders. Most significantly, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance to reiterate his support for SC2 and announced the signing of an Executive Order establishing a White House council to manage and further the initiative.

In August 2011, HUD underwent a competitive process to select a third party to administer and implement the fellowship program. As a result of the competition, HUD selected the German Marshall Fund (GMF) partnership as administrator. More>>

The partnership is comprised of GMF, Cleveland State University, and Virginia Tech. GMF is in the process of vetting 250 applications from potential candidates. By June, GMF hopes to narrow the applications to the top 30-50 candidates. GMF anticipates announcing the fellows no later than September 1st.

Winning cities will receive technical support and technology to conduct their own two-phase competitions, to identify and fund economic development plans that meet their specific needs. In the first phase, selected cities will encourage teams of experts in such fields as transportation planning, economic and community development, business incubation, engineering, and others to submit economic development proposals for their city and/or region. In the second phase, the finalists from the first round will compete by developing comprehensive strategic economic development plans. The cities—using an expert panel of local and federal officials, academics and policymakers, private-sector and non-profit stakeholders, and community representatives—will award the financial prize to the team with the strongest plan.

Listening Session for the SC2 National Resource Network

On July 9, 2012, HUD hosted a listening session for the SC2 National Resource Network. The purpose of the listening session was to secure public feedback on the program development for the resource network. Feedback from the listening session was incorporated into HUD’s Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the resource network that was released on November 28, 2012. You may download the list of participants, here. To view the listening session, please visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32ZwCWVSlDY&feature=youtu.be